Congestion charging. A classic example of market segmentation.

Today’s newspaper reports (NSW – Reclaiming First) have firmly put the idea of a CBD congestion tax back on the agenda.

 

Along with a fairer toll-way payment system, the renewed calls for a review of our approach to traffic and payments system is a classic example of how ‘customer segmentation’ might assist in better, and improved ways to travel.

 

The proposal for introducing a congestion tax in the CBD aims to segment the audience (different traffic forms and needs) and to then apply a tax against them, with the resultant funds to be applied to the much needed up-grade of public transport.

 

Similarly, the introduction of peak-pricing tax for travel on toll-ways has also been mooted.

 

While purists might claim such strategies create ‘one toll for the rich and another for the poor’, a more positive attitude might be that ‘those who need it most or those who fail to plan ahead’ should pay more’. Of course the inarguable outcome would be that any taxes raised should be reinvested in upgrading of current transport and infrastructure.

 

Marketers use segmentation strategies in many ways – a couple of very simple analogies can already be found at work in the CBD – many sandwich shops provide a discount for early lunch orders that help ‘ease the squeeze’ for the peak lunch-time period.

 

So-called ‘happy hours’ in bars and bistros and ‘early dining/pre-show dinner discounts’ are further applications of how segmentation assists to overcome the rush-hours and ‘ebbs and flows’ of business.

 

Marketing and public transport might seem odd bedfellows, but on closer scrutiny there future may be destined for future happiness.

4 Step Web-check for High Performance Websites

Your website is one of the most effective marketing tools you have at your disposal. An effective website will ultimately drive sales for you business.

 

As part of the brand audit within the BrandQuest Marketing Strategy Program, we view and review our client’s websites to see if they are contributing to their brand growth. Unfortunately, many are not being utilised efficiently and are lacking at least one or more of following four critical aspects required to help grow their business:

1. Design
2. Optimisation
3. Usability
4. Measurement

 

In the first part of this article we will focus on the first two aspects and how you can use them to improve your website’s performance. In our next newsletter, we will cover the remaining two aspect – usability and measurement.

 

DESIGN

Web design is obviously a very important aspect of your website. Your site has about 2 seconds to grab the customer’s attention, and therefore needs not only to look attractive, but must also reflect your marketing strategy and be consistent with all other aspect of your marketing.

In previous articles we have talked about the six fundamental elements within your marketing strategy. The two elements that must be carefully considered when designing your website are:

    – Who you need to say it to >>> your target market
   – How you should say it       >>> your brand essence

Your target market helps focus your message (see How to Avoid Expensive Marketing Mistakes)
 

Your brand essence conveys a “tone and manner” or personality, in order for your target market ‘connect’ with your brand and to bond with it. It helps define the overall presentation of your brand including typography, brand colour palettes, tonality etc.

Once you have provided your web designer with a brief that is reflective of your marketing strategy, you need to also be aware of some design faux pas that designers like to incorporate.

 

	1.	Don’t burden your pages with high-resolution images. This will increase the loading time of your web site and if takes too long to download the site visitor will likely move on.
	2.	Hold back on the razzle and dazzle. Sites that twinkle and sparkle with too many animated buttons, flashy banners and useless pictures will distract your customers from what you really want them to see and read on your site and will probably make them dizzy and leave.
	3.	Leave Flash for game and entertainment sites. Using a flash site instead of text will make it really hard for customers to find your site as search engines do not like flash. If you are really committed to a flash site, then make sure you also create a non-Flash version.

 

 

OPTIMISATION

Optimisation (often referred to as SEO – search engine optimisation) is the process of increasing web traffic to your site by improving your natural rank in a search engine such as google. Unless a site is listed on the first search page, the likelihood is that it will not be found by your potential customers.

Search engines have specific criteria and algorithms to determine where a website ranks. Over 85% of people in Australia use Google, so while there are a few different criteria for each search engine, there is little point worrying about the others.

Keywords

The first step, once again, is understanding your target market and the likely words or phrases that they will use to search for what you are offering. Where it gets tricky, is working out which keywords are realistic to optimise for. It is not about ranking for the most popular keyword, but rather the most relevant keywords.

If you sell female clothing, trying to rank with the keyword phrase “female apparel” will pit you against 16,000,000 other listings. If you narrow this down to “female business apparel sydney” it will reduce competition to 94,600 other pages (this may still seem like a lot, but this means that there are only 94,000 sites in the entire globe that contain those key words and most would not be optimised to rank on the first page for that keyword phrase).

How do I “own” my keywords?

Content is King!!! Each page on your website can target up to 2 – 4 keywords. Original and relevant content that has an appropriate level of keyword density is best (the number of times your keywords are used as a percentage of total text on the page). A benchmark that is often used is 6 – 8% density, however the key is to make sure the page reads well and makes sense.

So now that you have determined your keywords and have the right content, you need to optimise your search results. While there is a lot of conjecture regarding the factors affecting your search engine ranking, here are 5 that will have a great impact.

 

	1.	Keyword use in your title tag Your title tag is written in your HTML code (the language that your website is written in) and generally appears at the top of the browser window. Going back to our example – if we now search for “women’s dresses sydney” in google, the first listing is for the site StyleFeeder.com and its title tag is “Abercrombie & Fitch > Women > Dresses > Sydney – StyleFeeder.com”. The title tag should be 65 characters and be unique to each page of your site.
	2.	Popularity contest – inbound links This is based on how many websites know of you (link to your site) and how popular they are. Google uses “page rank” as their measure of your popularity with a score of 1 – 10. The more popular the site linking to yours, the more popular you will become. These links should come to all pages in your website, not only your homepage, and should have relevant descriptive link text/phrases.
	3.	Internal links Linking from one page in your site to other internal pages is another good SEO tactic. These links should utilise good and relevant phrases rather than the generic “click here”. This will help your keyword ranking and therefore increase the user experience as they will be able to find other relevant content on your site.
	4.	META Description Tag This is another tag that is written “under the bonnet” in the HTML of the site. It is a brief description of the page and should not exceed 200 – 250 characters. All search engines read the description tag, and utilise the content found within in the ranking process.
	5.	Tag Your Images Search engines can’t see images, but adding ALT image tags (HTML tags describing an image, and appears when the mouse is rolled over the image) will be used by google to improve your ranking.

Now that you have increased the traffic to your site, you need to focus on converting more users into customers. This is achieved by increasing your sites Usability and Measuring the success of all your efforts.

TO BE CONTINUED …
Stay tuned for the next installment where we will go into more depth regarding these final two aspects.

 

 

 

Why Tough Times Can Be Good Times For Smart Marketers

The signs of an imminent economic downturn are all around us. The media reinforces the tough times that consumers are currently experiencing and the business world watches daily as the ASX continues to fluctuate. The spillover from the sub-prime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending that has been buoying our economy for the last 12 years or more.

Obviously this downturn in spending and confidence sees many companies ‘retreat’ (cut their marketing budgets) in order to weather the financial storm. This strategy of course is an easy one to justify (especially by those responsible for finances) and has the added advantage of seemingly bolstering (some would say, camouflaging) earnings by simply cutting marketing costs as an expense to the company.

However, according to Harvard Business School’s John Quelch in a recently published article, marketing driven companies can learn from the lessons of the past and realise that when the going gets tough the tough get going – in a marketing sense.

MARKETING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES – PULL BACK OR PUSH FORWARD?
At BrandQuest we provide the following recommendations as suggestions that will see you come out the other side of the current ‘tough times’ in a much better position than you may be now – and certainly better than your competitors who may take the ‘retreat’ option:
  1.   Don’t invest less on marketing – invest smarter
  2.   Get closer to your customers – they need reassurance
  3.   Focus on core customers
  4.   Reassess your pricing tactics
  5.   Reinforce your core values

1.  Don’t invest less on marketing – just invest smarter. This is not the time to cut marketing. It is well documented that brands who maintain (some even increase) their marketing during a recession – when naive competitors are cutting back – can increase market share and their return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.

Take a good hard look and an unemotional assessment of your planned marketing budget. Make a list of the mandatory and proven ‘must haves’  and the less compelling ‘nice to haves’. Then ask yourself “what if we dropped the ‘nice to haves and added that budget to the ‘must haves”?

Without reducing your marketing spending you can improve the yield and effectiveness of your marketing by concentrating your efforts in the areas of known (marketing) productivity. Even better, your more ‘panic stricken’ competitors will more than likely ‘cut’ their budgets so you get a double whammy marketing effect by being more judiciously focused.

An added benefit is that you may find yourself in a stronger negotiating position when dealing with media, printers and other marketing suppliers who will be keener than ever to win your business and bank your revenue.

2.  Get close to your customers – they too want reassurance. During recessionary or tough times, customers are more likely to postpone purchases, trade down to a lesser quality, or simply buy less.  The ‘must-have’ features of yesterday’s good times are today’s ‘can-do-withouts’.

Talk to your customers about providing testimonials or developing case studies that demonstrate their importance to you. It’s important to remember that your customers are also feeling the tougher times – so offer them a reward for their custom, discount the price slightly in recognition of their on-going support or better still, find ways to ‘bundle’ your product or offer to them in order to provide them with better value in return for a larger sales transaction. And make sure the offer is seen as ‘specially’ prepared for them and based on the ‘past partnership’ and their loyalty.

You might even consider a direct sales campaign that offers these loyal customers rewards (ie: lower prices, bonus product) for any introduction to a ‘new’ customer that results in a sale to you.

3.  Focus on your core customers. These are your most precious tangible (marketing) asset and you need to nurture them through these times. But remember, they’re going through the same tough times also and are facing similar financial and operating pressures.

Find ways to get even closer and how you might be able to assist them even more. Brainstorm with your team ways that you might further demonstrate your appreciation and how to build an even stronger relationship with them. Deferred payments, improved ‘fast-track’ delivery, better terms, bonus ‘added values’, tiered discounts etc. Importantly play the game of ‘the other team’ – think like your competitor ie: If you were your competitor what offer or approach might you make to this customer that light lure them away from your company? This may well provide you with what you need to do to ensure they stay your customer.

To simply continue to do what you’ve always done for these customers may not be enough when the going gets tough. Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again with the expectation of different results.

There is no worse inquisition in business than the ‘if only we had done XYZ they wouldn’t have left us!

4.  Reassess your pricing tactics. Don’t deceive yourself. Even the most loyal of customers will become promiscuous during tough times. Make no mistake they will be shopping around for the best deals – not necessarily the lowest price. This doesn’t mean you have to cut your prices, but you may want to offer more temporary price promotions, implement quantity discounts, extend credit to long-standing customers, create ‘bundled services’ or ‘buy two and save even more’ type of pricing tactics.

Importantly, look outside your industry or category to see what pricing tactics other marketers are deploying in their respective categories – ask yourself how you might adapt similar tactics?

5.  Reinforce your core values. Reinforce in your marketing the core capabilities and values that have got your company to where it is today. In tough times like these Companies (just like people) need reinforcement that “even though the economy is toughening up” some things never change.

Don’t scare or frighten your customer by showing signs of panic. Especially don’t (visibly) cut corners in any way, shape or fashion that a customer might perceive you to be ‘reducing your service’. At times such as these your current customer base is paramount and your service and core values (customer support, warranty, on-time delivery) may be the very reasons that a customer feels reassured and comfortable – and stays with you.

Deploying the above strategies and uniting your marketing and sales (and admin) teams across the board to emerge stronger than others will place your company or organisation at a distinct advantage when the current cyclical climate is over.